Informatics continued the work in support of the UK's academic Engineering Departments that was started with the Interactive Computing Facilities (ICF) programme. In 1985, the ICF, Single User Systems and applications software programmes were merged into the Engineering Computing Facility under a small executive. During the life of Informatics, the thrust changed from hardware support to providing applications support. The engineering community was keen to maximise the work of individual groups by putting together environments that included libraries and applications from different departments. The emphasis was on making such software work together. The general term used was Engineering Applications Support Environment (EASE). Some specific engineering areas were:
A major activity of the Department was raising awareness in the engineering community. The Department ran Courses regularly throughout its life, published two major Newsletters at regular intervals, and ran a set of discipline-oriented Community Clubs.
Information was also provided to engineering researchers concerning the relative performance of types of equipment. These assessment reports were provided at regular intervals as the market changed.
